Blog Posts

youtube

So, Janet Jackson is the person we have to thanks for the video streaming website we all know as YouTube. Her “NipSlip” back at the 2004 Superbowl was what triggered Jawed Karim, a former employee of PayPal, to create the video sharing site for us all to see the slight wardrobe malfunction over and over again.

Only being 10 years old, YouTube has already become the largest music streaming website in the world, ahead of Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. However, YouTube differs to it’s competitors by being completely free to the public, earning all it’s income through advertisement. We are usually able to skip the True View in-stream ads we currently see on YouTube before and during the videos after 4 seconds, using the psychological factor that people make up their mind on whether they want to watch something or not in the space of 4 seconds. If this time period was any longer then people would leave straight away as we are an impatient generation that are used to getting what we want on demand. The “Skip” button is placed on the advertisement so it is visible to us consumers, making us think “Oh, I can skip. I’ll wait.” This sometimes ends up in us wanting to watch the whole of the advert as we’ve actually given out our time to it. We’ve all endured in the tortured impatience of having to watch a 30 second Advert before a video and this is a major part of the new service YouTube has introduced to us, called YouTube Red.

So what is YouTube Red?

$9.99 A MONTH SUBSCRIPTION FEE

NO ADVERTS – Yes, YouTube Red takes away the adverts from the videos! The adverts annoy some people that much that they are willing to pay a fee of $9.99 a month.

FREE GOOGLE MUSIC SUBSCRIPTION – A free subscription to Google Music which is also advert free and would usually set you back £9.99 a month.

OFFLINE VIEWING – Allows you to download videos and watch them offline for up to 30 days. It also allows you to watch videos with the screen turned off, meaning you can finally lock your phone and not lose the video/audio!

EXCLUSIVE CONTENT – There will be exclusive video content for YouTube Red subscribers and maybe in the future the main content creators may even create new channels just for subscription viewers.

YouTube Red is only available in the U.S at the minute as they are still sorting out licences with the PRS to be available in Europe. However, if and when the licences do become available and you decide you do not want to pay for this premium service, then you don’t need to panic. YouTube will stay exactly the same for non-paying consumers, you will just have to deal with the ads.

In my personal opinion, as a student, YouTube Red wouldn’t be something that I would sign up to. Yes, streaming is something that I do pay a subscription for, but I pay on Spotify for the student discounted price of £4.99 a month. I suppose it’s completely down to each individual, but personally I can put up with the adverts on YouTube and pay for my music via Spotify rather than paying monthly fee’s to both companies.